SAY Hackathon 09.2012 is launched! All SF engineering folks gather in Monster Island for the kick-off. Continue reading

There's something soothing about animals at work. Another thing I appreciate about being here. Continue reading

In the reception area, Ashley, Amanda, and canine. It's great working in a dog-friendly office. Continue reading

These are the shenanigans to be expected when someone takes a vacation. From left, Leila, PaulB, and MattV. On box, Shilpa. Continue reading

From time to time you've seen glimpses into my work life here at SAY Media, usually composed to time with a release of the TypePad software platform. iPhone TypePad.app just got bumped, and here's your next glimpse: one of my co-workers having a bad hair day. There are so many reasons I love coming to work; this is just one of them. Speaking of which, we've got job openings -- check 'em out and drop me a line! [UPDATE] Moments after this post appeared another co-worker had a... Continue reading

Debugging graph: anger & sheepishness. It's funny because it's true. Continue reading

Hackathon is happening! This is the Mobile Rebooted presentation. Continue reading

Nothing stimulates conversation quite lie donuts, except for square donuts. Continue reading

One of the unmitigated joys of smartphones is the ability to CHOOSE to catch up with office happenings and related reading while making conference calls and enjoying the first coffee of the day. I've spent the last few days with Gisela & Rainer, friends who have run a German restaurant in the Canary Islands for the last 26 years. Seeing SF and our tech bubble through their eyes has been interesting. Our always-on culture can be liberating and expanding, or oppressive. Learn where the 'off' buttons are on... Continue reading

The 4th of July LNG weekend behind us, it's time to focus on this short and busy week. We're testing a new software release, an important one to our company. Lots of new functionality, and a lot of subtle compatibility improvements which require careful planning for good testing. We've rolled out some comprehensive automated testing and a completely rewritten beefed-up internal testing tool (which itself has bugs) so we're coming properly armed to the battle. Still, much of what we're doing this week is arriving piecemeal, is interdependent,... Continue reading

Here's Isaac at my office, at the main Skype-station, chatting with his aunt and new baby cousin in Los Angeles. Videoconferencing has come such a long way since CI-SeeMe provided a postage stamp-sized video. That was mind-blowing. Today's Skype and FaceTime feel just right; a worthy successor. It's a fine time to be alive with new toys :-) Continue reading

So it's 19:07, after a long and fruitful day, and Isaac and are have made it to the MUNI platform. We check the NextMuni display: 1 min & 47 mins! In the outbound direction we count nine MUNI trains, all within a hundred feet or so from the next. Rush hour must have been joyful :-/ Continue reading

I am prattling on about MUNI Metro this week. So sorry. Probably a side effect of being stuck underground so frequently in recent days. Yesterday my boss held up our meeting until I arrived, a few minutes late. Thank you, Darrick. MUNI made some extensive improvements a few years ago, adding computer tracking so trains could narrow the gap between them. It's been a good thing. Sometimes, in the frustration of the occasional issues, it's easy to forget the good that our mass transit does. Thank you, MUNI,... Continue reading

My first exposure to municipal 'net coverage dates back to Ricochet radio modems, way before Wi-Fi. They negotiated with San Francisco for pole-top access, but couldn't come to terms. AnxhorFree blanketed several neighborhoods, including mine, the Cadtro. FON provides pockets of Wi-Fi by having users allow some access through their home and business connections. The most recent newsmaker was Google, who wanted to cover the city with free public Wi-Fi. Negotiations failed, IIRC. I don't care as much as I ought. What I really want is underground Wi-Fi.... Continue reading

This is what my neighborhood, The Castro, looks like just after the morning rush hour. The crowds of workers is gone, the sidewalks abandoned to the waves of delivery people and the homeless. The quandry of my morning is when to hop onto MUNI Metro. If I join the throngs I'm guaranteed a long wait on the underground platform as over-stuffed train after another crawls by, the most unfortunate lot packed into cars with broken air conditioning systems, the windows steamed up, rivulets of condensate flowing down the... Continue reading

There's a reason ShouldIRideMuni.com exists: the flooding of capacity during home games. The service gamely adds trains and buses, and has lots of staff around the stadium (to correct Darwin-absurd behavior like stepping in front of an LRV), and it's all in good fun. Until you get jammed on a train going nowhere because of system overload. Carry a book. Perhaps a bottle of water. And a dose of good humor and good cheer. Folks are going to the game and having a good time. Enjoy their joy.... Continue reading

For around a decade I commuted by car up and down highways 80 and 101 into Silicon Valley, putting around 500 miles onto my beater VW Rabbit each week. Switching to work exclusively in San Francisco meant a lot less wear and tear on my car and a lot more time for me. No more 2-3 hours on the road daily. Sure, I miss hearing All Things Considered reliably, but that's a small price to pay. I always carry a library book in my pack, for when things... Continue reading

We really like our coffee around here, constantly experimenting with various beans and brewing methods. Matt just returned from a holiday trip to Chicago, bringing back a bag of Intelligentsia Finca Santuaria Columbia Micay beans. It's perhaps the best cup of joe I've had in a long, long time. Thanks Matt! And thank you to Matt's brother, Charlie, a store educator at Intelligensia's Broadway Coffeebar location. Continue reading

This blog post is being submitted via email, with an attached photo. Let's see how it looks. Mickey Continue reading

This post is via BlogPress, my workhorse blogging third-party app. So far, so good. Turkish coffee in my vacuum mug, sun on my face, a working development environment, and things to do. Excellent! - Posted using BlogPress on iPhone. Continue reading

This post is being dictated to the Dragon Dictate third-party application. It's sitting on my iPhone. The idea is that I talk fast like this where you get to hear what's up faster and faster. I was going to not correct what it did but I thought that was terrible. If you speak more slowly to simply clearly and think it works better. Not that much better. This is being posted from the website. No way to add photos and if one navigates around previous composing is lost... Continue reading

What a great time and place in which to be! Why, this very morning I got warm in the Castro, cold fog around Twin Peaks, and mist in Noe Valley. I was tooling around in The Pony -- the Jeep on the right -- bringing my youngest to school. Then a café, then MUNI into the office. Testing the TypePad universe continues; this is being posted with our official iPhone app. Joy and happiness. Continue reading